On Martin Luther King Day, remember the uncompromising politics of Black economist Sadie Alexander | Opinion

This Dr. Martin Luther King Day offers an opportunity to step back and reflect on an extraordinary past year in American history—one that lit up in neon lights the need to finally address the extreme, and deeply rooted, racial inequality in America, but that also leaves unclear whether or not our nation can find its way to address all our issues of structural and systemic racism.

2021 offers an opportunity to reflect on another anniversary. One hundred years ago this year, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander became the first Black American—of any gender—to receive a PhD in economics, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. To put Dr. Alexander’s achievements into context, U.S. women received the right to vote in 1920 and, in 1921, white supremacists burned Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma to the ground.

» READ MORE: A new generation of black female economists revives a Philly lawyer’s legacy with the Sadie Collective

The Sadie Collective formed three years ago to address the dismal underrepresentation of Black women in economics and related fields. The Collective has been raising awareness of Alexander’s life and work. As a community organizer and an economist, we are writing now to amplify the Collective’s work and the work of Alexander to blend advocacy and policy analysis together, setting an example scholars should follow today.

While Alexander received her degree from a prestigious University and had the support of her teachers and mentors, racial and gender discrimination erected enormous barriers to her pursuit of a career as an economist. Not easily denied, Alexander instead became the first Black woman to graduate from Penn Law School, in 1927. She then became the first Black woman to pass the bar in Pennsylvania and to practice law in the state, working alongside her husband, Raymond Pace Alexander.*

As a lawyer, Alexander led fights against discrimination in Pennsylvania statute and legal cases. As an organizer and activist, she advocated for Black women to organize—in the church and in clubs—to magnify their impact. In speeches, she grounded her analytical perspective in history and in the structural discrimination faced by Black women.

Bucknell economist Nina Banks (2021 president of the U.S. association for Black economists) has documented that, despite membership in the so-called Black elite, Alexander did not ground her public arguments around the need for Black people to prove their moral or economic worth. Her speeches concretely and accessibly address how race, gender, and class oppressions come together in practice. Alexander also recognized the importance of policy. While Congress in 1938 deliberated excluded domestic and agricultural workers—most Black workers—from the nation’s first minimum wage, Alexander pointed to the need for a minimum wage that would cover domestic service.

Martin Luther King, known best for his leadership in the civil rights movement and for the right to vote, shared with Alexander an understanding of structural inequality. In a speech leading up to the 1963 March on Washington, King spoke about the need for what today we could call reparations. Dr. King used the example of white farmers who across the span of U.S. history have received, through legislation and policy, support from land grant Universities, technical assistance from agricultural extension agents, actual land, and direct cash payments (through price supports) that Black farmers were excluded from receiving.

“When we come to Washington in this campaign,” King concluded, “we’re coming to get our check.” King likened the Black economic experience to an innocent prisoner freed after 35-40 years then told “Now you are free…Don’t give him any bus fare to get to town, no money to buy any clothes, no money to get anything to eat. This is what happened to the Black man in this country.”

» READ MORE: Forget the notion of MLK as ‘Dreamer,' say activists. He was a radical, whose rhetoric is used today.

As the Biden administration staffs up, we see some reason for optimism that it will include people with an understanding of the need to directly address structural inequality based on race and gender—as well as how these intersect with class. For example, Princeton economist Cecilia Rouse, if confirmed, would become the first Black head of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. Rouse knows through experience how modest has been the progress of Black women in economics: five out of 1,197 doctoral degrees in economics in 2018 were Black women.

Dr. Alexander was denied a career in economics but that did not stop her from being a pioneer. Forced onto a different path, she like Dr. King still managed to offer those who heard her speak—and future generations—a nuanced understanding of how a history of deep discrimination shapes our world.

On this Dr. Martin Luther King Day, let us focus on what they taught and reject a willful tendency to pretend structural inequality does not exist—in the discipline of economics and, more importantly, in the real world.

Kadida Kenner is the director of campaigns for the PA Budget and Policy Center. Stephen Herzenberg, PhD, is an economist and the executive director of the Keystone Center Research. They both write from Harrisburg.

*Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to give the correct full name of Sadie Alexander’s husband.